Sorry for the second reply, but I just came across a very interesting and relevant article about Watson being used to create recipes. http://www.popsci.com/article/...

You have moved the goal posts. What Watson does is clearly intelligent. It is not creative, but that is nothing to do with intelligence. The process you describe for how watson works can just as easily describe a brain. A human parses the natural language, then triggers a system of neurons, which are cross linked and activate based on thresholds. You can literally feel that process occur in your brain at times where you don't actually cross the threshold and you are unsure of an answer. You will have several possible answers that never broke the threshold of correct answer.

I'm talking about stuff like how our conservative party supports gay marriage now. The parties seem capable of having rational arguments and possible stance changes. Everywhere has polarization, but the American version is extreme. There seems to be zero hope of compromise as can be seen in various recent events. I wanted to know why this is so. Another poster pointed out that america has "winner-take-all" political system, which seems like a very good explanation for the lack of any middle ground. It would force you into an extreme position so as to differentiate you from your opponent.

Eh, stop being silly, you know that's not what i'm talking about.

People are still fighting over Ireland... We fought the British for literally hundreds of years. We were fighting them before America even existed. There is still serious tension in the north, there isn't bombings any more, but they sure aren't all getting along.

I don't see how any of this has anything to do with the extreme polarization of american politics? I don't see why any of this makes it so there is an even split with no middle ground between the groups. It sounds like it should be much more diverse since you are saying it is inhomogeneous. And that is what I find so strange. America politics seems incredibly homogeneous, way more than you would expect for such a large and varied country. There is an almost perfect split down the middle and each group has very tightly defined goals which are generally the exact opposite of the other one. I find it very hard to understand how all these disparate groups over thousands of miles all ended up in one of these two groups, yet smaller countries are fragmented.

Yes, those are the loopholes. That is the problem, not the taxes. One of those loopholes has already been closed.

Well I want to know why it is like that in america and not elsewhere. I'm from Ireland for example, and we have 3 major parties and a couple of smaller ones. And people switch between them and the parties change their policies. It doesn't seem to be anything like America. It seems to be much more fluid. People don't just take a side and stay there no matter what and assume everyone else is wrong. And from what I read of other countries its similar.

But you talked about there only being a handful of jobs? :S I'm confused

Yes, absolutely, Ireland did not get 9 billion. Corporate tax revenue is more like 4 billion per year. This is creating more than a handful of jobs though. 4000 jobs from apple, 500 jobs from facebook, 2000 jobs from google, 1000 jobs from amazon, etc. Those are the ones I know off the top of my head and they are all growing.

They are looking into it. The loopholes are the problem, not the actual taxes themselves. And one them has already been closed. http://www.independent.ie/busi...

Apple employees over 4,000 employees in Ireland. The large companies with bases here are also here for our educational talent, as well as the taxes. The taxes bring them here and the employees keep them here. That was the whole idea behind introducing the low taxes (they are around 10%) in the 80s. Its the reason we are not a bunch of peasant farmers any more. We are very much a knowledge economy these days.

I wonder if its possible for America to fix this horrible "if you aren't with us, you are against us" mentality. There seems to be no concept of a middle ground, no grey. Everything is either black or white. How did it end up like this?

If it did it wasn't coke. Most likely it was cut with something else that made you feel bad,

I'm pretty sure you can't assume your opinion applies to everyone. I agree with the original statement, as an omnivore, who does pay more for free range stuff than than factory farmed. You can be sure there are many more like me given the huge amount of organic and free range stuff in the supermarkets. I'm very interested to know why you would pay more to not eat lab grown meat, that is immensely mind-boggling.

Here you go. Testable, duplicatable example of evolution. http://www.newscientist.com/ar...